Category Archives: Supreme Court

Huntsville, a historically Christian city in Alabama, with a population of 180,105, has gone Wiccan.

On November 6, 2014, the City Council of Huntsville, Alabama, had a warlock — a Wiccan priest named Blake Kirk — give the invocation at the start of its public meeting.

Warlock Blake Kirk gave invocation at Huntsville City Council meeting

Brian Fraga reports for Aleteia that Kirk approached the podium to offer this prayer:

“O gentle goddess and loving god, we thank you for the beauties and the wonders of the day that you have given to us, and for the opportunity we have this evening to assemble here and work together to make Huntsville a better city for all its residents.”

The Huntsville City Council originally had asked warlock Kirk to give an invocation earlier in the summer, but rescinded the invitation after City Call received phone calls from alarmed citizens. Then, the city council changed course and re-invited the warlock because to exclude him would be “discriminatory.”

Although Huntsville, Alabama, historically has been a majority Christian town, like the rest of America, Huntsville residents are becoming less Christian. Recent surveys show that 25% of its residents adhere to non-Christian faiths, including paganism, or no religion.

Beginning in 2012, the the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) threatend to sue Huntsville if its City Council continued to have invocations that were predominantly given by Christian clergy. FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel said the U.S. Supreme Court has authorized public prayer at government meetings as long as they are open to members of all faiths — “That means they can’t deny atheists the right to come give a message, or satanists. They can’t deny a Wiccan to come give a prayer. Those are important things to us.”

So the Huntsville City Council, in order to ward off accusations of discrimination, asked the local Interfaith Mission Service (IMS) to assemble a rotating schedule of invocation speakers that include Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, even pagans and atheists.

Since when is atheism a religion?

Jeannie Robison, an Episcopal deacon and executive minister of the IMS, said the Huntsville City Council “asked IMS because we are a cooperative of congregations and individuals, and we keep tabs on the community’s religious landscape.”

On Sept. 25, Kelly McCauley, a Huntsville resident and atheist who serves as a board member of the North Alabama Freethought Association, opened the Huntsville City Council’s meeting– the first atheist-led invocation at a government meeting in Alabama. McCauley quoted Thomas Jefferson and highlighted the virtues of wisdom, courage, justice and moderation. Despite his high-minded words, McCauley prefers that public prayers and invocations be done away with altogether: “My belief is that it doesn’t do any good. It doesn’t actually improve anything. And it does actually introduce a sense of divisiveness in the community.”

Seidel echoed McCauley’s position: “We think prayers are entirely unnecessary and divisive at city council chambers. There is absolutely no need for government to be engaging in these prayers.”

In recent months, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has called upon congressional leaders to withdraw their invitation to Pope Francis to address Congress when the Pope visits the United States in 2015. The foundation has also asked two mayors to cancel public plans to welcome the Pontiff, and has requested that congressional leaders hold public hearings into severing the United States’ ambassadorial ties with the Holy See.

Seidel actually mis-cited the U.S. Supreme Court. The court’s decisions on prayer at public government meetings did not impose mandatory diversity schemes where municipalities have to abide by quotas of Christian and non-Christian prayers as the Huntsville City Council is doing.

Brett Harvey, an attorney with the Christian public interest law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, explains: “The government identifies a neutral selection process, and the chips then fall where they fall. If you live in a community dominated by a particular religious perspective, the fact that most prayers would be consistent with that perspective doesn’t indicate that the town is favoring one over anybody else. It just reflects the demographics of the community.”

Harvey was a member of the legal team that defended the town of Greece, N.Y., against a lawsuit from two women who objected to the town’s practice of beginning legislative sessions with Christian prayers. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 in May 2014 that the public prayers did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Justice Anthony Kennedy said the prayers did not coerce participation by nonadherents, “By inviting ministers to serve as chaplains for the month, and welcoming them to the front of the room alongside civic leaders, the town is acknowledging the central place that religion, and religious institutions, hold in the lives of those present.”

Harvey also points to the fact that the courts have recognized the centuries-long tradition in the United States of invoking God at public government meetings. Congress has had a chaplain open its legislative sessions for more than 230 years. God is also invoked when the Supreme Court is called to order.

“It’s part of the tradition because it’s proven to be a benefit for public leaders to humble themselves and ask for divine guidance because they recognize that they may not have all the answers themselves,” said Harvey, who accused groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the American Civil Liberties Union of waging a campaign to silence public prayers. “If they can’t do that, then they want to impose some sort of obligation to censor public prayer,” Harvey said, adding that the Supreme Court’s rulings prohibit government leaders from censoring prayers or forcing people to give invocations from a perspective apart from their own religious understanding. “So the demands that prayers be purged of any sort of Christian content, or the argument that the government has an obligation to open up meetings to allow anyone and everyone the opportunity to take over the microphone, is simply not true. The Constitution nowhere requires that in any context.”

John Buhler, the director of Mission Huntsville, a collaboration of local evangelical churches, said that whether people feel included or not can be a consideration when choosing who will give the invocation. He argued that the issue is not a constitutional matter in that that the Constitution does not require government bodies to seek out all possible religious perspectives for invocations. “If the Council believes it would be best to invite the wisdom, help and blessing of God, it has the right to include an invocation to whomever or whatever the Council believes can provide such. So for me the bigger issue here, and across the land, is whether what has led to this is really the Council’s choice, or if they have been forced to do this by some who say this is what’s required to be constitutional, which is absolutely not the case,” Buhler said.

Can’t We All Get Along?

A black couple that owns a wedding chapel has been offering their facility to couples for years. People from around the country visit the charming chapel set in a beautiful wilderness area to get hitched.

But a few months ago, a couple came in wanting to do a KKK-themed wedding. At first, the couple, Roy and Esther Black, thought it was a joke, something from a David Chappelle comedy routine. They wondered where the hidden cameras were.

To their surprise and shock, however, they found out that the couple was serious. They wanted to dress in their KKK garb and have the Blacks perform the ceremony. The best man and maid of honor would also be dressed in KKK attire but, like the couple, without hoods.

Very Charming Chapel.

How Dare you discriminate against me?

As nicely as they could, the Blacks said they couldn’t do it. They were opposed to the beliefs of the KKK. They suggested that if they really wanted a KKK-themed wedding that they should go elsewhere.

The couple was irate and decided to file an anti-discrimination lawsuit against the Blacks.

“The chapel was open to the public,” Blake Atkinson told a reporter for KLKA TV, “and since the chapel is advertised for weddings, the Blacks should be forced to perform our wedding. Public accommodation laws demand it”

“City officials told the Blacks, both ordained ministers who run The Chapel in the Pines, are required to perform such ceremonies or face months in jail and/or thousands of dollars in fines. The city claims its ‘non-discrimination’ ordinance requires the Blacks to perform wedding ceremonies for anybody that asks no matter what their beliefs are regarding the people who are asking to be married.”

Civil rights groups around the country are outraged over the decision of city officials. How is it possible for a couple like the Blacks to be forced to perform a wedding for a couple whose lifestyle and belief system they abhor?

Good question. The same can be asked of people who oppose same-sex marriage.

The above story is fictional but based on a true account related to same-sex marriage.

It is designed to show the absurdity of new laws being passed and enforced to mandate that the owners of places like the Hitching Post WeddingChapel in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, perform weddings for same-sex couples or go to jail or face stiff fines.

Coeur d’Alene officials told the Knapps privately and also publicly stated that the couple would violate the city’s public accommodations statute once same-sex marriage became legal in Idaho if they declined to perform a same-sex ceremony at their chapel. On Friday, the Knapps respectfully declined such a ceremony and now face up to 180 days in jail and up to $1,000 in fines for each day they decline to perform that ceremony.

“‘The city somehow expects ordained pastors to flip a switch and turn off all faithfulness to their God and their vows,’ explained ADF Legal Counsel Jonathan Scruggs. ‘The U.S. Constitution as well as federal and state law clearly stand against that. The city cannot mandate across-the-board conformity to its interpretation of a city ordinance in utter disregard for the guaranteed freedoms Americans treasure in our society.’”

What’s next? How will the tyranny be expanded? Look what’s happening in Houston, Texas. If the government can force the Knapps to go against their beliefs, then they can force others to do the same.

Homosexuals and the civil officials of Coeur d’Alene will argue that there’s no law protecting the KKK, and that’s the point. If the government can make up laws protecting one class, it can make laws to protect any class or any belief or nay group and make us pay dearly for any opposition.

In a recent interview with Alex Jones of InfoWars, Steele confirms everything FOTM has said about the Sandy Hook school massacre on December 14, 2012, and the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013 — that they were false flag events.

False: The public are given an untruthful version of the event by the government and the media. The falsity can range from no oneactually had been killed or hurt (it was all theater); to someof the alleged victims are real; to all the alleged victims are real but the alleged perpetrator(s) is a fall guy who was set up by the “real” conspirators behind the scenes.

Results in a “rallying around the flag” effect: Whatever the true nature of the “false flag” event, the objective is to arouse and manipulate the emotions (fear, anger, outrage, indignation) of the American people so that they’ll “rally around the flag” in an outburst of patriotism, supplying the current White House occupant and his (and his party’s) policies with their support and loyalty.

Below is the video of the interview, followed by the transcript of Steele’s words, interspersed with links to the relevant FOTM posts.

Beginning at the 6:03 mark, Steele said:

“From where I sit, both the [Sandy Hook Elementary] school in Connecticut and the Boston Bombing were false flag operations.

“The school in Connecticut had been closed for years. There were no students, no teachers, no parent-teacher associations. The paramedics were not allowed into the school. From where I sit, that was a complete false flag. It was a drill. But … others have exposed the actors who were involved, financial relations with the families that were allegedly victimized, who had their homes bought and were then given exit pass. All of that is on the record, but you don’t see the media covering that.”

Steele continues: “Boston bombing, for me, the truthteller was when the rabbis and the priests rushed to comfort the wounded and they were not allowed to get near any of the wounded.That, in intelligence, we call an indicator. And then you add to that the fact there were no, I mean no, wounded people taken to hospitals. And finally, you add to that the big to-do about the amputee. He turned out to be a hired actor for a company that specializes at putting amputees into battle field simulations. False flag. Boston was a practice attempt to lock down an entire city.”

Beg. at the 8:44 mark, Steele said: “the actual bomb was a theatrical device. You don’t buy gun powder at a fireworks store to create a bomb. It just is not done. I had my explosive ordinance people look at this. Everybody laughed at this. This was school kids stuff. THERE WAS NO BOMB. There were no injuries. This was a false flag.”

Steele continues: “And now we’re seeing 9/11 unravel, and Richard Gates getting on CSPAN. Basically, the American public is starting to wake up, and all of these little things that they could have gotten away with are now starting to collapse because of the Internet, because of guys like you, because of people like me and my contributing editors. And so I think we’re coming to the end of the road here. I do believe, and I really want to stress here, I think 95% of the people in the U.S. government are good people trapped in a bad system. But the last 5% are doing some evil, pathologically sick things, including murdering U.S. citizens.And that’s the part that I’m starting to see signs of encouragement. For example … the court has finally just refused to accept [Eric Holder] Attorney General’s assurances about secret state documents, and for the first time in modern history the court is saying to the executive, ‘You have to show us these secret documents. We will not make you make claims without showing us the documents.’ I believe the tide is turning, legally, against government misbehavior.”

Three black homosexuals in Obama’s “church” in Chicago (Donald Young, Larry Bland and Nate Spencer), one said to be Obama’s lover, were all assassinated in the space of 1.5 months in late 2007 before Obama became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

On the afternoon of December 1, 1955, 42-year-old African American Rosa Parks, returning home from her job as an assistant tailor at a Montgomery, Alabama, department store, boarded bus 2857 on the Cleveland Avenue line. When told to give up her seat for a white man, she refused and was arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws. Her act of civil disobedience precipitated the 13-month Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was led by Martin Luther King, Jr. On the 100th anniversary of the February 4, 1913, birth of Parks, explore 10 surprising facts about the civil rights activist.

Getty Images- Rosa Parks

1. Parks was not the first African-American woman to be arrested for refusing to yield her seat on a Montgomery bus.Nine months before Parks was jailed, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first Montgomery bus passenger to be arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger

(The reason Miss Colvin was not used for the boycott and lawsuit is when she was arrested she did not play nice. LOL . According to police report she was fighting and cussing. So the powers that be did not think she would be best to lead the charge).- Steve~

. (Parks was involved in raising defense funds for Colvin.) Three other African-American women—Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith and Susie McDonald—also ran afoul of the bus segregation law prior to Parks. The four were plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case that resulted in the Supreme Court ruling bus segregation unconstitutional.

2. Parks was a civil rights activist before her arrest.
Parks was a long-time member of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which she joined in 1943. At the time of her arrest, she was a secretary of the local NAACP chapter, and the previous summer she had attended a workshop for social and economic justice at Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School. Her political activism continued through the boycott and the rest of her life.

3. Parks had a prior encounter with James Blake, the bus driver who demanded she vacate her seat.
In 1943, Blake had ejected Parks from his bus after she refused to re-enter the vehicle through the back door after paying her fare at the front. “I never wanted to be on that man’s bus again,” she wrote in her autobiography. “After that, I made a point of looking at who was driving the bus before I got on. I didn’t want any more run-ins with that mean one.” After the written order from the Supreme Court outlawing bus segregation arrived and the Montgomery Bus Boycott ended on December 21, 1956, one of the newly integrated buses that Parks boarded to pose for press photographs happened to be driven by Blake.

4. Her act of civil disobedience was not pre-meditated.
Although Parks knew that the NAACP was looking for a lead plaintiff in a case to test the constitutionality of the Jim Crow law, she did not set out to be arrested on bus 2857. Parks wrote in her autobiography that she was so preoccupied that day that she failed to notice that Blake was driving the bus. “If I had been paying attention,” she wrote, “I wouldn’t even have gotten on that bus.”

5. Parks was not sitting in a whites-only section.
Parks was sitting in the front row of a middle section of the bus open to African Americans if seats were vacant. After the “whites-only” section filled on subsequent stops and a white man was left standing, the driver demanded that Parks and three others in the row leave their seats. While the other three eventually moved, Parks did not.

Hyperbole: A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect; an extravagant statement.

After Lauren Bacall’s death, Daily Beast had an article describing her as “as a smart and sharp liberal and anti-communist” and “she was a worldview person”. They said she told Larry King in 2005 that she was “anti-Republican…A liberal. The L-word.” Let’s examine some of that “total, total, total” best thing on earth shall we?

“You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal (and anti-Republican)”

My new book, “The Murder of the Middle Class” launches today Monday July 14th across America. It’s about how America, the greatest nation in world history, is being destroyed, plundered and looted by the premeditated “Murder of the Middle Class.” This is no accident, mistake, or coincidence. This is a purposeful plan. This is the boldest, grandest criminal conspiracy in world history.

Although the man at the center of this massive world-class fraud is Barack Obama, there are many moving parts and co-conspirators. These include famous billionaire businessmen, corporate CEOs, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street bankers, central bankers, government employee unions, the IRS, EPA, NSA, the Bar Association, assorted communists and America-haters, and even some well-known D.C. establishment Republicans. It’s quite a shocking list of conspirators.

Lies and fraud are at the center of this “murder of the middle class.” President Obama and various big government politicians need to distract the middle class from their real agenda. Lies are their WMD- weapon of mass distraction.

So they claim Obamacare is about “saving the sick and uninsured”…when the real objective is income redistribution (through higher taxes and higher premiums) to make the middle class poor and dependent on government.

They claim environmental regulations and green energy will save us from global warming…when the real objective is bankrupting the middle class by tripling utility bills, gas bills and grocery bills.

They claim immigration reform is about “protecting innocent children”…when the real objective is to create 12 million new low-wage employees in the labor force…depress middle class wages for generations to come…create 12 million future Democratic voters…and assign all of them lawyers at the expense of middle class taxpayers, to enrich the Bar Association, the biggest donor to the Democrat Party.

They claim higher taxes are to “create equality”… when the real objective is income redistribution and starving the biggest donors to conservative causes and candidates- small business and the middle class.

They claim higher education spending is “for the kids,” …when the real objective is enriching teachers unions so they can funnel hundreds of millions back to Democrat politicians.

They claim bailing out GM was to “save jobs”…when the real goal was saving bloated pensions for auto union members, whose unions kicked back hundreds of millions to Democrat politicians.

The Fed claims quantitative easing is “to save the economy”…when the real goal was making crony capitalist Warren Buffett $12.7 billion richer last year, while the children and unborn grandchildren of middle class taxpayers owe back $17 trillion in debt used to fund a fixed craps game on Wall Street.

It’s always about lying to cover-up the real agenda of murdering the middle class; redistributing wealth; making it impossible for small business to compete with big business; rewarding lobbyists, lawyers and crony capitalists; keeping politicians in office for life; and putting big government in control of our every move.

But the biggest lie of all is when politicians like Obama claim, “It’s all okay. Things are getting better. We’re in a recovery. Look away, there’s nothing to see here.”

It’s not okay. This author was just notified by his health insurance company that my family’s policy has been cancelled. When Obama was elected my bill was $500 per month. Today it’s $1700 per month. But now my family will have no insurance at all, because of Obamacare. Tens of millions of middle class Americans will soon receive the same notice. This is no mistake. This was premeditated fraud upon the middle class.

My grocery bills have skyrocketed. How about yours? My electric bills are at all-time highs. Gas prices have doubled since Obama became president. How can middle class people survive, without becoming dependent on government? Ah, that’s the point.

All this while the economy is in crisis and collapse. The GDP for the first quarter was NEGATIVE 2.9%, one of the worst showings in history, six years after Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus promised to “save” the economy. That stimulus went to Obama’s voters (the poor) and Obama’s donors (the super rich). But the bill (in the form of debt) goes to the middle class for decades to come.

No, things are not alright. Here are just a few of the facts from my new book, “The Murder of the Middle Class:”

China is set to pass America as the world’s #1 economy based on consumer spending. THIS YEAR. It will be the first time since 1872 that America has not been the #1 economy in the world.

The number of working age Americans without a job has increased by about 10 million in Obama’s first 5 years as President. That means each and every year of Obama’s Presidency, 2 million more Americans disappeared from the workforce.

There is no doubt the great American middle class is being murdered. I’ve spent the last year writing the “Murder of the Middle Class” to give all Americans the information, tools and courage to save the middle class and the American Dream. This fight is just getting started. Get informed and join the battle. God Bless America.

There’s a kick in the teeth to the unions.

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COURT: PUBLIC UNION CAN’T MAKE NONMEMBERS PAY FEES

BY SAM HANANEL ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court dealt a blow to public sector unions Monday, ruling that thousands of home health care workers in Illinois cannot be required to pay fees that help cover a union’s costs of collective bargaining.

In a 5-4 split along ideological lines, the justices said the practice violates the First Amendment rights of nonmembers who disagree with the positions that unions take.

The ruling is a setback for labor unions that have bolstered their ranks and their bank accounts in Illinois and other states by signing up hundreds of thousands of in-home care workers. It could lead to an exodus of members who will have little incentive to pay dues if nonmembers don’t have to share the burden of union costs.

But the ruling was limited to “partial-public employees” and stopped short of overturning decades of practice that has generally allowed public sector unions of teachers, firefighters and other government workers to pass through their representation costs to nonmembers.

Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said home care workers “are different from full-fledged public employees” because they work primarily for their disabled or elderly customers and do not have most of the rights and benefits of state employees. The ruling does not affect private sector workers.

The case involves about 26,000 Illinois workers who provide home care for disabled people and are paid with Medicaid funds administered by the state. In 2003, the state passed a measure deeming the workers state employees eligible for collective bargaining.

A majority of the workers then selected the Service Employees International Union to negotiate with the state to increase wages, improve health benefits and set up training programs. Those workers who chose not to join the union had to pay proportional “fair share” fees to cover collective bargaining and other administration costs.